273. Quick Thinks: How to Create Messages People Remember

Summary

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Think Fast, Talk Smart: Quick Thinks – How to Create Messages People Remember

Host: Matt Abrahams
Guest Expert: Dr. Carmen Simon, Neuroscientist
Date: March 19, 2026
Episode: 273

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Episode Overview

In this insightful Quick Thinks episode, host Matt Abrahams welcomes Dr. Carmen Simon, a cognitive neuroscientist, to share actionable strategies on making messages truly memorable and engaging. Together, they break down the cognitive science behind attention and retention, offering practical tips for anyone who needs to communicate with impact in business and life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Embodied Cognition & Making Experiences Active

[02:50]

• Dr. Simon emphasizes the importance of embodied cognition—the interplay between the brain, body, and environment when forming memories.
• Active, physical engagement improves memory retention over passive experiences, even something as simple as handwriting notes during meetings.

Notable Quote:
"The more you invite your audiences to interact with anything, especially physically, then you are already impacting cognition. So how can that happen in real life?... The most benign way in which we engage the brain and the body is simply asking people to take notes."
— Carmen Simon [03:25]

2. Invoking Mental Imagery

[04:44]

• Matt asks about using vivid language to create a sense of physical place.
• Dr. Simon explains mental imagery is a good proxy, but combining vision with descriptions of motion or action increases memorability.

Notable Quote:
"When you said, 'it was a dark room and he kicked a wall in it,' now you have the vision plus some movement happening. The brain has evolved to pay attention to movement."
— Carmen Simon [05:20]

3. The Power of Space and Environment

[05:45]

• Holding events in unique or unexpected spaces (castles, boats, monasteries) grabs attention and heightens memory by leveraging unpredictability and multi-sensory involvement.

4. Curiosity, Intrigue, and Emotional Quadrants

[06:08]

• Curiosity is not always easy to provoke, but creating a bit of tension can elevate engagement and memory.
• Carmen discusses the neuroscience of emotion:
  • Valence: Positive/negative feeling
  • Arousal: Level of alertness/engagement
• Boredom is low arousal and negative valence, "where memories go to die."
• Surprising, even slightly negative or tension-filled stories (e.g., cybersecurity dangers) can stimulate curiosity and attention.

Notable Quote:
"Quite often attention and memory are created at the intersection of negative valence and high arousal. There is tension and quite often that tension can provoke some curiosity."
— Carmen Simon [08:35]

[09:40]

• Mix story elements: arouse without overwhelming.

5. Reducing Cognitive Overload & Structuring Your Message

[10:24]

• Overloading audience with content isn’t about complexity, but randomness.
• The brain loves patterns. Use fractal structure—ensure your core message is repeated at every scale (the "cauliflower all the way down" analogy).
• Return to a clear 10% core message often; elaborate with details or stories, but always tie back to the central point.

Notable Quotes:
"It's not really complexity that gets us in trouble. It's randomness."
— Carmen Simon [10:47]

"So as a practical technique, think about all your content... wonder what are just some core sets of properties. That's what your 10% message would come in as well."
— Carmen Simon [11:25]

6. Emotional Impression and Takeaways

[14:00]

• Even if the audience remembers only 10% of what you say, the emotion they felt can leave a strong and lasting impression.
• Combine emotion with memorable phrases for message recall.

7. Visuals and Memory

[14:48]

• Humans are primarily visual; visuals play a major role in memory.
• The myth of "learning styles" is debunked: we are all fundamentally driven by visual cues.

[15:04]

• Cliché phrases (like "win-win") don’t hurt as much as cliché images (mountain-top, iceberg, chess). Most cliché images are processed with low engagement.
• Surprise and subvert visual expectations: twist a familiar image to deliver a jolt and drive your point home (e.g., an “iceberg” revealed to be an ice cream cone).

Notable Quote:
"The global brain doesn't have any energy for cliche images... Visualizing business success by showing a business person on top of the mountain is like the worst thing you can do."
— Carmen Simon [16:50]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Active Engagement:
  "The most benign way in which we engage the brain and the body is simply asking people to take notes. Tell your audience this is worthwhile, this will serve you well. Write this down." — Carmen Simon [03:38]

• Emotional Quadrants:
  "Lower left, negative valence and low arousal, that's where boredom settles in and that's where memories go to die." — Carmen Simon [08:16]

• Clichés in Communication:
  "The global brain doesn't have any energy for cliche images... So here what we did, we took an 'iceberg' and made it an ice cream cone—now you didn't expect that." — Carmen Simon [17:25]

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Important Timestamps

• [02:50] – Embodied cognition: active vs. passive experiences
• [04:44] – Using language to evoke physical/mental imagery
• [06:08] – Unpredictable environments and memory
• [06:35] – The roles of curiosity, valence, and arousal in attention
• [10:24] – Overloading audiences & use of "fractals"/core messaging
• [14:48] – The impact of visuals and how to break clichés
• [16:47] – Innovative, surprising visuals in presentations

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Practical Takeaways

• Engage physically: Incorporate actions—handwriting, movement, immersive environments.
• Create mental imagery: Use descriptive, dynamic language.
• Leverage intrigue: Introduce tension and curiosity in stories to increase arousal.
• Structure content: Maintain a core “throughline” and repeat it in different forms (the “10% message”).
• Mind your visuals: Avoid cliché images; twist familiar visuals to surprise and engage.
• Pair feelings and facts: Emotionally charged moments plus memorable phrases stick best.

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For more episodes and resources, visit fastersmarter.io or join the Think Fast, Talk Smart learning community.

Transcript

[A]

Hi Matt here. Imagine what it would be like if you could feel less nervous and more confident in your high stakes communication. Well, you can. With a new free 3 day communicate with calm Confident Quest, you'll join people from around the globe to learn simple, proven strategies to manage anxiety, calm your body and reframe your thoughts. On March 24th, 25th and 26th, we will join together live and discuss our quest task for the day. If you can't join live, no worries, you can watch the video recording later. Go to fastersmarter IO Learning to sign up for this free quest and learning Community access Again, that's fastersmarter IO Learning. Now a word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you quality content free of charge. Work moves quickly Most days it feels like we're responding to something. An email, a proposal, a decision. Almost nonstop. And in the age of AI, the pressure isn't just to move faster, it's to make sure that what you send actually sounds like you. That's one reason I've been using Grammarly. AI is here to stay, but knowing how to use it well at work is the hard part. What I appreciate about Grammarly is that it helps me think and write more clearly without taking over my voice. Sometimes I'll use it to get started outlining an email or jump starting a blank page and then I refine from there. It helps adjust tone and phrasing so what I send feels natural and appropriate, not stiff or generic. It works across more than 500,000 apps and websites, so it's there wherever I'm writing and it gives you a kind of gut check, helping you simplify ideas, clarify your message, and sound confident and credible. This is AI that works for you, not over you. In a world of generic, AI don't sound like everyone else. With Grammarly, you never will. Download Grammarly for [e-mail] that's Grammarly.com

[B]

we

[A]

need to leverage the way our brains learn and focus to help make our messages more memorable. My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. My interview with neuroscientist Carmen Simon was truly insightful and helpful. Carmen provided so many tips and tools that we simply could not fit all of her wisdom into one episode. So fasten your seatbelts and get ready to learn more ways to make your messages unforgettable. Your work distinguishes between active and passive experiences. Do you have any communication guidance for a leader who wants to turn a routine, often boring experience like a team meeting or an all hands training of some sort into an experience that's more active and engaging and memorable so that people will collaborate more, buy in more and remember it more.

[B]

Yes, I like all those phrases that you're using. And one of the hottest trends in neuroscience is embodied cognition. The reason it's one of the hottest trends is because recognizing that the way we come to know the world, perceive it, and eventually build memories and eventually build decisions is not by building some abstract mental representations. Yeah, sure, we do that. But we come to know the world at the intersection of brain, body, interacting with the environment. Embodied cognition. So the more you invite your audiences to interact with anything, especially physically, then you are already impacting cognition. So how can that happen in real life? Some companies are lucky where they have an experiential center. You can invite people in your offices. Even this experience right now is memorable because we could have done this very easily, virtually. But now we are in a studio surrounded by excellent people and their skills and equipment. Now more of our senses are involved. We can kick it down a notch because not everybody has access to these kinds of spaces. One thing that I was able to show in a neuroscience study I conducted was the difference between what happens when somebody views a presentation passively versus when they're asked to type notes as they're listening to the speaker, versus when they're asked to handwrite notes. So of course that third condition, people in that performed better in terms of attention and subsequent memory. Because now think about how much is involved when you handwrite. Your fingers are in it, the entire hand is in it, your entire arm, your neck, your shoulders, you're contributing to this. Besides, when you're handwriting versus typing, you are synthesizing things a little bit more versus when you're typing, by the way, you're typing more verbatim what the other person says. So the processing is not so deep. So that could be the most benign way in which we engage the brain and the body is simply asking people to take notes. Tell your audience this is worthwhile, this will serve you well. Write this down.

[A]

So getting people to do something where they're connecting their physical experience with their mental experience helps. So a technique I often recommend that people do is to put people in a physical place mentally. So I use descriptive language. So the room is dark, it's cold outside. Is there a similar effect when it's not actually physical, but you're getting people to envision some physicality?

[B]

It's a good proxy so in addition to the vision of it all, can you apply some motion? Like when you said, yeah, it was a dark room and he kicked a wall in it. Now you have the vision plus some movement that is happening. Or the air was circulating so much that her hair became curlier in the moment. You see now there is some action involved, some movement. The brain has evolved to pay attention to movement lately. Even spaces have evolved. Like for instance, I participated in a conference and it was held in a castle. So sometimes the environment in itself contributes to making the experience a little extra special. Another one that I just presented at recently was in a monastery. I've heard of events being held on a boat. I've heard of business meetings happening in something that otherwise wouldn't have been considered your typical and predictable boardroom. So one of the reasons they're extra special is because remember it's brain body interacting with the environment. So the environment itself is unpredictable. You increase the chances of attention and memory.

[A]

Super cool. So if you really want to help your audience, it's not just thinking about your message and what you ask them to do. The space in which you do it can have impact. I want to turn to two things that are very important in storytelling, and I'm curious to get your perspective on how they help us with attention and memory. The value of intrigue and curiosity. These are tools that get people to lean in. What are your thoughts on those? And do you have some research and specific advice on how we can leverage those?

[B]

It's an interesting dimension, especially that of getting the brain curious and not an easy one to reach because are you noticing that some people are so jaded where whatever you show them is like, eh, another one of those. So this is why I'm glad that you have the wonderful listeners that you're talking about, because we need people like them to try a little bit harder to instigate and get the brain to be just a little bit extra excited. Obviously you often rely on intrinsic motivation. Like some people come to your content and they're intrinsically motivated to listen and they're curious about things when they may not. And you have the responsibility, can you create some tension in the brain? What I'm noticing in my research time and time again is that as we calculate emotions and from a neuroscience perspective, we have two variables that are instrumental to emotion. What are they? Valence, which is how much the brain enjoys an experience. It could be positive or negative, and arousal, meaning how alert and awake people are during that experience. So picture this as quadrants now. So you have valence on a horizontal axis, you have arousal on a vertical axis. At these quadrants you have these intersections of. You're really amped up and you like something and now you're alert. Like you cannot possibly be nonchalant.

[A]

What immediately popped into my mind is listening to a comedian tell jokes.

[B]

So a good stand up comedian doesn't necessarily let you relax. Lower right. Now you can relax a little bit more, maybe like reading a book. Lower left, that's negative valence, but you're not upset. So as you're thinking about these quadrants, know this lower left, negative valence and low arousal, that's where boredom settles in and that's where memories go to die. Some people might think that oh should always have things that are positive. Either that they amp you up or they keep you more relaxed, but positive nonetheless. But that's not what I'm observing. Quite often attention and memory are created at the intersection of negative valence and high arousal. Now I'm feeling it. I'm a little anxious about this. There is tension and quite often that tension can provoke some curiosity, which is what you're asking about. So I remember we were doing a presentation about cybersecurity and this vendor was saying, if you use us, we will help you manage information technology and OT operational technology. And in the presentation they're saying if in it, some of your systems get hacked, data gets stolen, there's a breach, people lose their jobs. OT for physical object gets hacked, people can lose their lives. Because if you hack an oil rig, for instance, people can really die. So we're just getting like really deep into this and even the slides are turning dark and you could see like a little cross with a little bit of blood dripping off of it. Now you can like physically see this lean in motion. The brain is motivated to keep on going a little bit. So from a neuroscience perspective, I think I would equate this dimension of motivation and leaning into a system versus withdrawing as a sign of curiosity. Now tell me a little bit more. I'm willing to stay with you for the next moment over until you get me to that lower left. You're always just a click away from lower left, but a bit of tension and friction can help you there.

[A]

So as we think about the stories we tell, the examples we use, the testimonials we provide, we should actually, I think almost map them on your two by two matrix and see where do they fit. And as long as they are arousing in some way and the valence isn't as important, and we can think about how we can drop those in. And I assume we can't have too many back to back of all the same kind, because it can become almost overwhelming.

[B]

It's true, it can become overwhelming. And you don't want people to be staying in that upper left for too long because then it's just really draining. But a combination of the three. So upper left, upper right, and lower right, those are really good. Every so often, the brain will go into a slight state of boredom. We can't claim that all of a sudden just everything is going to be an epiphany.

[A]

And you argue that we often over deliver on content, which creates cognitive overload. What are the key communication habits a person should break to reduce the load they put on their audience and ensure that their core message is not only received, but understood? So we say more than we need to.

[B]

It sounds like sometimes we say more than we need to. And it's an intriguing concept to me, because here's the good news for everybody. Especially as the world is getting more complex, the brain actually synchronizes better with that which is complex than that which is simple. Where does complexity and overload come in? It's not really complexity that gets us in trouble. It's randomness. So really, when we talk about overload, we're talking about some random bits and pieces that people go on in and out, in and out, in and out, without enabling somebody else's brain to see some patterns, to see how all of these, as difficult as they may be, components come together. So one practical technique, especially if we have technical people who like to geek out for a moment, is related to fractals. So for those of you who may wonder, what are fractals? They are these objects, or even parts of our bodies have those properties. Objects that have the same properties at any level of magnification. So for instance, if you picture a tree, you have the trunk, you have the branches, and if you go to the smallest of the smallest of the branch, that little branch has the same properties as the entire big tree. Or if you go to the grocery store, you see a head of cauliflower. The entire head of cauliflower is composed of these tiny baby heads of cauliflower. And those baby heads have the same properties as the entire head. So it's cauliflower all the way down. So as a practical technique, think about all your content, anything that you want to share with an audience. And as complex or seemingly overloading as it may be, wonder what are just some core sets of properties. That's what would. Your 10% message would come in as well, so that your entire content is being perceived as cauliflower all the way down. Because if you have this core that never changes, then you can elaborate and you can add stories and you can add details, you can add your analogies, all of those beautiful things you mentioned, but you won't feel overwhelming because you're coming back to the same core, you're coming back to the same short set of rules.

[A]

So have a clear through line that you can connect things to rather than. That's why when people go off on tangents, it can be so frustrating and difficult to stay focused. So we have to have a clear goal, clear direction, help our audience see the patterns of the things we're saying,

[B]

see the patterns and just come back home. So when you say control your 10%, come back to that 10% message every so often to say, yeah, we went over here and we went over here, went over here. But overall, everything just condenses down to this one handful of things.

[A]

We'll be right back to finish our conversation, but first we're going to take a quick break for a message from our sponsors. These sponsorships support the cost of making our show, allowing us to bring it to you free of charge. Hi, Matt here. Career coaching often comes through our workplaces, which can be a great starting point. But sometimes you want space to focus on your priorities, not your organization's. That's where Strawberry Me comes in. It's career coaching. You choose for yourself. You answer a few quick questions, get matched with a vetted coach, and in many cases you can start within 24 hours. You choose the coach, you decide the goal, you and you get to talk honestly about what actually matters, whether that's a promotion, a pivot burnout, or even leaving. There's no HR involved, no performance review lens, and if it's not the right fit, you can switch coaches. What I appreciate is the sense of agency. When you're feeling stuck, waiting rarely helps. If you've been thinking something needs to change, you don't need permission to explore that. Go to Strawberry Me TF ts. It's coaching focused on you. Think of it as therapy for your career. One of the other things that strikes me that 90% does is even though you might not remember the content, you might remember the feeling. And so even if I only remember 10% of what you say, I might leave saying she was really on her game and competent and that can help me as well.

[B]

The strong emotions will definitely help in a Competitive space. Challenge yourself to combine emotion with some verbatim phrases. You cannot afford to only operate on emotions just because other companies will also have their messages and their emotions. So ideally it's your combination that makes it through.

[A]

I have seen your books, I have seen your book covers, I've seen presentations that you've done. Visuals play very strongly in what you do. Can you give us some best practices and advice when using visuals to help with memory and engagement?

[B]

Yes, that is one of my favorite topics to talk about. Because with neuroscience we can debunk some myths and I'm sure you've heard this many times before. Same for our listeners, that some people are visual learners, some people are auditory learners, some are kinesthetic. I hope nobody ever repeats those sentences ever again. Because primarily we are the visual beings. 60 to 70% of our body receptors, which is how we take in the world and we start perceiving things and building memories. Our visual, we are visual people. Assuming of course you're visually able, even when you're not, you're still seeing inwards. You have to take care of your visuals. You can do them by showing people some pictures or by doing what you're recommending earlier, which I really like. Enabling the brain to see inwards, like building mental images. So don't put so much pressure on yourselves. Like suddenly you have to come up with some amazing graphics and you don't have a graphics degree. If you do have some sort of inclination towards the images. What I'm doing a lot of research on is cliche images and cliche phrases. I'm noticing that the brain, especially the global brain, I did a study on this, has some comfort with the written cliche. So for instance, if you say phrases like such and such is a game changer or this is a win win situation or data driven anything these days. I was noticing that as I included people from the us, people from Asia, people from Europe, we have a certain amount of comfort with the cliche. It's almost like it's a universal language. People come home, it's like I got it. As long as you don't overdo it. The cliches in that study, they're only 5% of the entire communication. However, the global brain doesn't have any energy for cliche images. And what are those? You want to take a guess? What's the most cliche image in business? Content.

[A]

The first thing that came to mind was like a sun rising or something.

[B]

You're not far. So the mountain climbing mountains and especially usually at a sunrise Or a sunset. And. And I have to say this, by the way, I was listening to this incredible keynote speaker, and he was a mountaineer, and he said, visualizing business success by showing a business person on top of the mountain is like the worst thing that you can do. Not only is it cliche, but most accidents in mountaineering happen when you go down the mountain. So just to show that you've made it there at the top, you have made it at the top, you make it. When you come back down at the bottom unscathed, that's success. So removing the technicalities, then, if we talk about visuals, then we have to ask, how is it that we avoid the cliches, the mountain of it all, and the chess strategies and the iceberg metaphor? So here what we did something with the iceberg metaphor. Because I was reflecting on that, and I was thinking, you know, the iceberg metaphor has a good story in it. It tells us that at the top, you see something small, but really what's important is underneath it. So I was challenging our designers to say, how would you visualize there's more to the story? So we had three versions in that presentation. One was you're seeing what would appear as a shark fin on top of the water, but then when you really zoom in, under the water is just a regular goldfish. In the other one, we were showing a person climbing a mountain that looks like it's covered in snow. But then on click, the whole thing rises, and that's actually the top of an ice cream cone. So because now you didn't expect that, you see there's more to the story, and that unexpected piece was a little bit unusual. Or you take any kind of stone structure, just say Stonehenge, and on click, you raise it up and you see a few aliens right underneath there in the dirt. There's more to the story. Depends on where you want to take it. But, see, you can challenge yourself to, say, look at a familiar visual and play off of it, jolt the brain out of its habituation.

[A]

So visuals play a very important role, and they're things we can do through visuals to stimulate interest and attention. Well, there you have it. Tips, tools and techniques to make your messages more memorable and engaging. I challenge everyone to apply Carmen's insights and advice into your upcoming communication. Thank you for joining us for this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast. Talk Smart. The podcast. This episode was produced by Kathryn Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with thanks to Podium podcast podcast company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts, be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. And check out fastersmarter IO for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please also consider joining think Fast Talk Smart's learning community. At FasterSmarter IO Learning, you'll find video lessons, learning quests, discussion boards, our AI coaches, and a book club. Again, that's FasterSmarter IO learning. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast, Talk Smart.